How To Track And Recover A Lost Or Stolen Mac

But the Mac itself and everything on it will end up in someone else’s hands. Is there a legitimate way to track and recover a Mac when it’s lost or stolen? As it turns out, the answer is a qualified yes.

Going Undercover

The Mac360 staff has long recommended multiple backups for Macs, but in the case of a Mac with critical files a recovery mechanism is needed.

Setup and recovery takes a few minutes, but after that, Undercover becomes set it and forget-about-it until your Mac disappears.

Install Undercover on your Mac and walk through the setup. If your Mac gets lost or stolen, simply log into the Undercover HQ site, and mark your Mac as missing.

That’s where Undercover goes to work. The next time the Mac goes online it phones home and gets the news that it’s stolen or missing. Undercover will send location information (using WiFi location technology) as well as photos, screenshots, keyboard logging, and network information to Undercover HQ, which you can view online, and use to track down the Mac or alert law enforcement authorities.

Wait. There’s more!

Some thieves are smarter than others and may attempt to use your Mac without a network connection. Because Undercover resides hidden in the background it may not be easy to detect.

However, Undercover can also simulate a hardware failure with a blank screen. The thief may take the Mac to be serviced. Undercover can display a full-screen message declaring the Mac to be stolen. Once your Mac is tracked down and recovered, simply login to Undercover HQ and report it as recovered.

Undercover doesn’t rely on email servers or an email app to contact Undercover HQ, so the connection and data is handled in the background. Undercover isn’t easily uninstalled by a thief as they need the administrator password. Undercover is also smart enough to detect proxy or firewall settings to connect back to Undercover HQ.

Is Undercover worth the price? That depends upon the value of your Mac and all the files you’ve saved through the years.

5G? Meh!

About Wil Gomez

I live in Brooklyn, New York and work in Manhattan; a Mac owner for almost 25 years, and an IT specialist on mixed platforms-- Mac, Windows, and Linux. Read more of my articles here. My fiancée is semi-famous Kate MacKenzie. Follow her on PixoBebo.